Today's Obsession: Apple's Watching Us?

In a dropping of a symbolic rock into its proverbial puddle, O’Reilly Radar disclosed yesterday that Apple was collecting data about our locations and movements, and was tracking our motions around the country via our iPhones and iPads. Generated a lot of hand-wringing on the ‘net yesterday, let me tell you.

Here, from Atlanta developer Will Clarke, is what Apple’s actually collecting and why. And here, from Pete Warden (one of the authors of the original article) is a little compiled application that will plot the data from your own iPhone’s mapped coordinates in its backup files onto a map and make a movie of its changes over time. Didn’t do a heck of a lot for me because my phone’s on the newish side, as you can see from my extremely Chicago-centric map, above.